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  I screeched to a halt as he put an arm across the small hallway that led to the front door from the dining room, smiling wickedly at me as he almost dared me to try to pass. The whole thing reminded me of those nature shows on science channels on television, where big animals pointedly hunt and stalk smaller ones before gobbling them up before they even know what hit them. The bigger ones allow themselves the glory of soaking in the moment before they actually execute the plan, and, simultaneously, the prey. The little animal has no chance.

  Most little animals, that is. Not this one.

  The moment Roger let out a loud, hellacious yell, he lunged forward toward me, and I dodged him at the last second, sending him stumbling back as I bolted up the stairs. As I set foot on the landing of the second floor, yelling and pounding from downstairs urged me toward my bedroom where I could easily escape from my window again. Roger stomping up the stairs loudly not far behind me launched me into overdrive, and in my hurry to leave, the idea of locking my bedroom door behind me slipped my mind. I darted across the length of my room and immediately began to fumble with the window, and I had just gotten the latch open when Roger’s shadow blocked the light coming in from the upstairs hallway

  He was on me by the time I’d gotten myself halfway outside. He might have been drunk out of his mind, but he still had enough sense to grab my ankle before I could slip away from him and out into the night. “You do not cross me,” he muttered coldly with a coarse, focused voice, giving my leg one swift yank, enough to drag me back inside.

  The unforgiving impact of the windowsill against my head as they collided was the last thing I remembered as I crumpled to the ground, the world around me spinning and dizzy, consciousness becoming an effort. Satisfied with his work, Roger leaving the room and stumbling back down the stairs was the last thing I remember before I shut my eyes, losing all sense of feeling.

  No matter how hard the little animals try to fight, no matter how fast they try to run, they always end up caught and eaten alive in the end.

  Chapter Three

  Feeling nothing after the impact, I honestly thought I was dead.

  Naturally, people tend to wonder what it’s like after you die, just because it’s something that nobody can prove to us with any certainty. Death is something you don’t understand fully until it happens to you, a concept that always struck me as bizarre. Take it from me – you see a whole lot of black, followed by the prophesized light at the end of the tunnel. When you reach that light, you fall out of the tunnel, and by the way, the light is white because it’s snowing in the afterlife, and you’re probably ill-prepared.

  Even if all of that made no sense to me, there were a handful of other things about my predicament that I could work out on my own. First and most importantly, I had no clue where I was, which, with a bit of exploring, was something I could change. Wherever I was, it was freezing, the cold biting and clawing its way under my somewhat bare skin and into my bones, which I likely couldn’t do much about. I was poorly protected from the elements in the t-shirt and jeans I’d worn to school that day, but I promised myself that I’d venture and find something or somewhere to keep warm. Lastly, judging by the moisture seeping into my butt, I was almost certain that I was sitting in a snow bank.

  The immediate objective, after climbing my way out of the snow, was finding shelter, which I placed above figuring out where I was. In my version of the afterlife, I could still feel worldly things, and the cold was really beginning to get to me. I sought someplace warm, my pace quickening with anticipation as I paced down the street, but it didn’t take long before a cruel combination of black ice and bare feet landed me face-first back in the snow again.

  It felt like I endured an eternity of cold, dark confusion before I finally laid eyes on what looked like the entrance to Heaven, in that particular, desperate moment. At the next intersection was a host of bright lights inside of a building, and while I didn’t know quite what it was just yet, I assumed it would protect me from the unyielding storm.

  Excitedly, I took off running toward the first promising thing I’d encountered, and when I slipped on another patch of ice, walking there carefully seemed like a good idea, too.

  Finally, as I approached, I read the illuminated sign over the front door of the building, recognizing immediately where I was – only a couple blocks away from my house, right on the town border between my little suburb and the next. The restaurant that stood before me was called Julian’s Italian Bistro, owned by a family in the next town over. It did really well for itself, easily claiming the title of the most popular eatery on this side of town. The atmosphere was quaint and the food was absolutely phenomenal, if not a bit expensive, though none of that mattered to me so much at that moment. Delicious pasta be damned, all I wanted was its warmth.

  Upon trying the door, I narrowed my eyes and glared angrily at the handle that refused to budge no matter how many times I yanked it. It was the only promising thing in my winter wasteland, and whoever or whatever ruled the afterlife forgot to unlock the door for me. A quick peek through the windows showed me an empty main dining room, tables and chairs vacant, not a soul in sight to help me out.

  Defeated, I kicked some snow away from the stoop and slid dramatically down the door onto the tiny area I’d cleared. All I could do was pray that my butt didn’t stick to the cement, because really, how much more miserable did I need to be?

  Seemingly helpless against my predicament, I resolved to just stay outside of The Bistro, as us locals had shortened the name to, and maybe, I could just become one with the terrible ice blanketing the sleepy town of Marmara. If the snow kept coming down like it was, I would be covered in no time, and hopefully, I would lose feeling and not have to face the cold anymore. Maybe I would just –

  Oomph!

  Maybe I would just end up flat on my back, halfway inside The Bistro.

  When I looked up, things seemed to go from cold to absolute zero, and my breath caught immediately in my throat. A single glimpse of the stranger from my dream a few nights before convinced me that, maybe, the frozen tundra wasn’t Hell after all.

  Although I hadn’t seen him in almost a week, I remembered his face just fine, his complexion smooth and his eyes bright, piercing into me with just a look. He stood over me, wisps of hair framing his face, wearing a thermal sweater with a simple pair of jeans, held in place by a belt with fading lettering around it. If his face wasn’t enough to jog my hazy memory, the solid DC buckle that reflected the light in the restaurant was certainly a good indication. I had wandered my neighborhood almost every afternoon, hoping to bump into him again, but hadn’t had any luck. Just as I was beginning to give up on trying to find him, he showed up once again.

  Trying my best to save face, I peeled myself up off the ground and scurried the rest of the way into the restaurant, brushing myself off as my dream friend shut the door to block out the cold. With a warm smile, he ushered me to a seat near the windows, watching the wind and snow whip viciously outside. Neither of us said a word, the traditional Italian concerto that The Bistro played drifting through the atmosphere instead of conversation. As a patron, I never paid the sound much mind, but in the comfortable silence, I couldn’t ignore it. As it swelled and receded once more, so did the storm outside, both of them seeming in perfect sync with one another.

  At the end of one piece, when I expected a similar one to follow suit, we were instead greeted with the opening piano and guitar combination of a slow rock song that I almost recognized. I recalled having heard part of it while flipping through radio stations in the car with Mum not too long ago. I’d wanted to keep it on so I could check it out, but Mum’s predilection for the Top 20 charts turned up her nose at the sound, and she switched it back to see if her favorite station had returned from commercial.

  My partner also seemed to take notice of the change in tempo, and his face contorted into one of utter confusion, his eyes narrow as he listened. It lasted only a moment before he grinned happily at
me once more as he rose from our table, pacing quickly over toward the register by the front door. Pressing a few buttons, he managed to eject a small piece of paper from the receipt machine before grabbing a pen from the counter and scribbling something down. His eyes housed a whimsical, playful look as he came back toward me, sliding the paper across the table, urging me silently to take it from him.

  May I have this dance?

  Keeping with the silence, I rose from my seat and nestled into him as best I could without touching his skin, lest the contact make him vanish again. At that time the week before, I didn’t even know who this mystery person was, but I didn’t think twice about tucking myself into him in the aisles between the tables. I followed his lead in assuming a proper dancing position, wrapping my arms around his neck as his hands rested in the small of my back. With a smile on his face, he led us in swaying back and forth together, the employee photos hanging behind the register our only audience as we shared the blissful moment together. While the song was only vaguely familiar to me, he seemed to know it quite well, matching our tempo to the song, speeding and slowing us in perfect time with the music.

  For the first time in a while, I let myself give into something crazy and strange and just enjoyed myself without a care in the world. Reservations were for another time, questions best saved for later, when I wasn’t wrapped in this stranger’s warm, inviting embrace, indulging in his presence, his smile, and his warm, almost spicy musk. Everything about him was entirely intoxicating, and I threw caution to the wind, letting myself get drunk on him, if only just this once.

  The story of my life, though, was that, as soon as I found happiness, something happened to mess it up, and the peaceful atmosphere we’d made together was disrupted by the haunting grasp of my life back in the real world. The song I’d set as my alarm for school days disrupted our dance, injecting the peacefully intense song with its angry rhythm and glum, dreary lyrics.

  I pulled myself away from my stranger in defeat, and his inquisitive eyes fell on me as the scene of The Bistro slowly began to give way to the walls of my bedroom. I looked to him with a meek smile as he stood there, the only thing not fading away, and told him, “Thanks for the dance. Come back soon.”

  I had only a moment to take in his gobsmacked expression before I blinked hard, finding myself entirely back in my bedroom. The Bistro was gone, the song had ceased, and the warmth I’d found in the stranger was with me no more. The song from my alarm continued to pour angrily into my room, suffocating the airy mood I’d found with its deep, gloomy despair.

  It was clear to me pretty quickly that whatever that was, it wasn’t my afterlife, but rather another bizarre dream like the one I’d had the week before in the meadow. I was still lying on the floor where Roger had left me, the blow to my head apparently enough to knock me out for the night. Since he hadn’t shut the window, the freezing night air outside must have gotten to me enough that I’d conjured the image of snow.

  Begrudgingly, I reached up from where I lay on the carpet and pressed buttons on my clock/radio until I found the one to shut the alarm off. Unlike most mornings, though, I didn’t miss it – clunking my head against the window had left me with a killer headache that throbbed inside my skull, and that music was definitely not helping.

  I made my way downstairs once I was dressed and ready for the day. “Ashley?” Mum’s raspy voice called out to me from the dining room as I reached the front door.

  “Yeah?” I asked, continuing to pull on my sneakers.

  “Would you like something for breakfast before you leave for school?” she asked as she rounded the corner, leaning against the wall for support. “Want me to fix you anythin’? You barely touched your supper last night, and that isn’t enough to get a girl through the day.”

  I was about to shake my head, before I assessed what it might do to the pain I was already dealing with, and decided against it. Not wanting to irritate myself any further, I settled for saying, “I’m okay. I think I’m just going to head out.”

  “Well, if you say so,” she acquiesced, “but come give us a hug, and then you can be on your way to school.”

  I complied with at least one of her wishes and made my way over to her, pulling her gently into my arms, so as not to hurt her fragile frame.

  Never had I harbored any hard feelings toward Mum, though I was never quite sure why she didn’t do something to get us away from Roger, knowing first-hand just how cruel he knew how to be. She tried her hardest to be the best mother she could be for me, despite all of her various obstacles; she woke up every morning and plastered a smile on her face for my sake, even if we both knew I wasn’t buying it anymore. I smiled back at her and told her I loved her before heading off out the door.

  “Oy!” my best, and admittedly only, friend, Ellie, called to me from the end of my driveway, where she was waiting to walk with me to school. She fixed her knit hat over her wispy, honey-blonde hair and tugged her peacoat closer as she crossed her arms. “Are you nuts? It was freezing last night, and you slept with the window open?” She snickered as I took my spot beside her as we took off in the direction of our school. “Do not come crying to me when you get pneumonia.”

  I smirked to myself. “It was open during the afternoon, and I must have fallen asleep without closing it,” I lied to her. Ellie knew bits and pieces about what went on at my house, and she offered several times to move me into her house or to move out with me after high school, but I still hid it from her when I could. Talking about it only served to make me angry, so I tried to do that as little as possible.

  As we made it into town, we were met with the same man we bumped into almost every single morning. “Good morning, ladies,” Julian Attollicci, the owner of The Bistro, greeted us in his thick Italian accent with a beaming smile. Ellie and I had begun walking to school together our freshman year, and we managed to run into Julian on the way there, meeting up at the same intersection almost every weekday morning for the past three and a half years.

  I let Ellie watch for our light to change while I peered longingly down the street that Mr. Attollicci had gone down, making his way toward The Bistro. It was all I could do to keep myself from catching up to him and searching his restaurant top to bottom, in search of any clue that might lead me to whoever was showing up in my dreams. I knew he probably wouldn’t be waiting for me there, as he hadn’t shown up anywhere while I was awake just yet, but I desperately wanted for him to be real, and would probably chase down pretty much any lead at that point to figure this mystery out.

  A tap on my shoulder jarred me from my thoughts. “His son is gorgeous and I’d wholeheartedly approve of you two dating,” Ellie quipped, “but Julian is both married and way too old for you. Come on.”

  I sighed as she tugged me across the street, my eyes glued to The Bistro, thoughts stuck on the dream from which I hadn’t wanted to wake up.

  Chapter Four

  A few more days passed me by without another trace of my stranger, and I found myself in my last-period study hall on Tuesday afternoon still thinking about him. Since our entire grade was sorted alphabetically to organize us into rooms for study hall, and Ellie Dalhart and Ashley Dawson were next to each other in our class roster, she and I were in the same room, but in a cruel twist of fate, our advisor forbade us from speaking. Having my best friend in the seat in front of me yet not being able to speak to her was one of hardest things about my senior year of high school. We tried passing notes at the beginning of the year, but all it got us was detention, so we’d stopped, and I spent a lot of my time staring longingly at the back of her head.

  As a tactic to ensure that the room would be quiet while she got some work done, Ms. Bennett, the advisor, let us listen to our music with headphones on the grounds that she couldn’t hear it. I’d set mine to shuffle, focusing more on that than the mundane Chemistry assignment I was trying to hammer out.

  In the midst of doodling little cartoon atom structures on the side of my page, I let my mind
drift with the music. The singer in my ears crooned about the few moments he got to spend with a girl who’d really piqued his interest, and how he desperately yearned to see her again. Never before did I have a connection to the song, but with my stranger on my mind all week, I couldn’t help but to empathize.

  It felt like I’d been swallowed up in my bizarre dreams, and, moreover, in my stranger, but as tempting as he was, I’d begun to plead for my recollections of him to disappear so I could get myself back. I wanted to be enamored with a boy I could see and feel and enjoy while I was awake, that I knew was a real person and who wasn’t just a figment of my imagination. The questioned verity of his existence was beginning to make it a little easier to stop myself from getting too carried away.

  Though, it did provoke a thought. I had an art project due Friday to showcase what I’d learned during our lessons about portraiture. My biggest strength had always been representing people, both lifelike and cartoon, and my teacher, Mr. Protoccelli, had loved my work since I was first in one of his classes in 10th grade. The medium in which we did it was up to us entirely, but the only requirement was that our piece had to feature our best attempt at a human portrait.

  Would it be crazy to do that portrait using only my memories of the guy from my dreams? Perhaps, but I was going to do it anyway.

  I couldn’t help but to smile to myself as I traded out my Chemistry notebook for my sketchbook. I planned to complete a draft during study hall, to make sure I got every detail of him right, and then I’d paint him on canvas before Friday. Maybe someone in my class would know who he was, and I’d just have to hope that he wasn’t repulsed by the idea of a girl he didn’t really know painting him for her art class. Trying to let him go seemed like my best, most sane option, but I was finding him rather hard to just forget.